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      Why McAuliffe Isn’t Mentioning Biden in Virginia Governor Race

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      Terry McAuliffe attacks Trump, but avoids talking about his Democratic ally in the White House — pointing up a vulnerability for the party next Tuesday, and beyond.RESTON, Va. — In Terry McAuliffe’s tough fight for a new term as Virginia’s governor, he has been striving to frame the election as a referendum on a president.Just not the one who is currently sitting in the Oval Office.For weeks, Mr. McAuliffe has made little mention of President Biden, instead using his campaign rallies, media interviews and millions of dollars in campaign advertising to make the race all about former President Donald J. Trump.In a way, Mr. Biden’s scheduled campaign stop with Mr. McAuliffe Tuesday evening, as part of a last-week effort to energize Democratic voters, highlights just how little he has been present in the race at all.The delicate distance Mr. McAuliffe has put between his campaign and the president, his friend of four decades — whom Mr. McAuliffe helped carry Virginia by 10 points just a year ago — underscores a difficult reality for Democrats looking anxiously ahead to the midterm elections next year. With his moderate, art-of-the-possible politics, Mr. Biden fails to rouse anywhere near the same passions as Mr. Trump, who spurred Democrats to the polls in record numbers throughout his four years in office. Nor has Mr. Biden’s administration given Mr. McAuliffe much to advertise, after months of Democratic infighting on Capitol Hill over the president’s dwindling domestic ambitions.Rather, in an off-year election with outsize national importance, Mr. Biden has loomed as the unnamed president just offstage: largely ignored in favor of his predecessor, though his own performance is a major factor in the closeness of the race and could play a big role in its outcome.Democrats reject the idea that the race is a referendum on Mr. Biden’s presidency, but there is widespread acquiescence to the idea that the party’s fortunes are yoked to his standing — a shift in strategy from the 2010 and 2014 midterms, when a number of Democratic candidates for competitive seats distanced themselves from former President Barack Obama. This, in turn, has sent waves of anxiety through Democratic circles, as lawmakers prepare for what are expected to be difficult congressional campaigns in 2022.“I don’t know if it’s a referendum on Biden, exactly — it’s just a general feeling of not understanding why nothing can get done,” said John Morgan, a Florida trial lawyer and top donor to both Mr. Biden and Mr. McAuliffe. He said he largely blamed congressional Democrats for the tightening of the Virginia race.“The party is single-handedly torpedoing Terry McAuliffe,” Mr. Morgan said. “And I think that if Terry loses, Democrats just need to grab a hold of themselves, because the midterms are going to be a blood bath.”Virginia’s off-year elections do not always accurately foreshadow the midterm results: Mr. McAuliffe won in 2013, defying the state’s pattern of electing a governor from the party that does not hold the White House, yet Republicans won the midterms the following year. And many fatigued Democratic voters now simply want to tune out national politics altogether.But strategists in both parties say Mr. Biden’s early struggles and the lack of enthusiasm around his presidency could be a decisive factor.“The overriding factor in the environment is not Donald Trump, it’s Biden’s approval rating,” said Tucker Martin, a Republican strategist in Richmond who voted for Mr. Biden but plans to support Glenn Youngkin, a Republican and former private equity executive, over Mr. McAuliffe. “Both these candidates, they’re really captive to the national political environment. That’s the reality.”Advisers to Mr. McAuliffe note that his contest with Mr. Youngkin tightened at the end of the summer, just as Mr. Biden’s approval rating began to fall, as the president’s promise of a return to normalcy faltered in the face of the Delta variant, chaos on the southern border and the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan.But they see hopeful signs in the fact that Mr. McAuliffe’s support remains higher than Mr. Biden’s approval rating, which hovers in the low to mid-40s — lower than that of any president than Mr. Trump at this early stage.Mr. Biden, left, campaigned for Mr. McAuliffe in the summer around the time that the race tightened and Mr. Biden’s approval ratings fell.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s declining approval ratings among core Democratic constituencies, including young, Latino and Black voters, could inhibit turnout efforts for Mr. McAuliffe, complicating his path to victory in a race that could hinge on which candidate best mobilizes 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a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Swing voters in the suburbs have gotten over their early excitement about replacing Mr. Trump, said Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who has run focus groups about the Virginia contest. While Mr. Biden’s victory at first inspired “ginormous relief,” she said, “Now, there’s a realization like, Oh, yeah, Biden’s not perfect, and things aren’t feeling enormously better.”Neither Mr. McAuliffe nor Mr. Youngkin has mentioned Mr. Biden in his ads, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign commercials, underscoring how little he motivates voters in either party — a striking change after many years in which sitting presidents routinely played starring roles in advertisements by candidates in both parties.In the closing weeks of the race, Mr. McAuliffe, who served a term as governor from 2014 to 2018 but was barred from a second consecutive term by Virginia law, has tried to put some daylight between his campaign and Mr. Biden’s administration. Though he never directly criticizes the president, Mr. McAuliffe has repeatedly highlighted the political risk posed by congressional inaction on the president’s legislative agenda. In private conversations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House, allies of Mr. McAuliffe say he has argued that the souring national environment is hurting his chances.“We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington,” Mr. McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said during a virtual call with supporters this month. “As you know, the president is unpopular today, unfortunately, here in Virginia, so we have got to plow through.”Mr. McAuliffe downplayed the remark, saying he was referring to a general sense of frustration with inaction in Washington. But it was a sharp departure from earlier in the race when Mr. McAuliffe predicted his state would “take off like a booster rocket” if he was elected governor and could work with Mr. Biden.The tonal shift is particularly striking, given the long friendship between the two men and the similarities in their political brands as experienced party insiders with centrist leanings. Mr. McAuliffe declined to run for president in April 2019 after a three-hour dinner with Mr. Biden during which the future president laid out his path to victory — one based on the same kind of consensus-oriented platform that Mr. McAuliffe had envisioned for himself.“I love the guy,” Mr. McAuliffe said of Mr. Biden at the time. “I’m a big fan.”Mr. Biden’s promises to move past polarizing politics helped him win the White House, offering a refuge for voters tired of the turbulence of the Trump era. Now, however, at a moment when Democrats need to marshal their forces, the prospect of calm leadership and a diminished agenda may not be so enticing to his Democratic base.Wes Bellamy, a co-chair of Our Black Party, which promotes the political priorities of Black voters, said Mr. Biden was not inspiring the same sort of loyalty from Black voters that Mr. Obama did.“Black folks came out in droves for the Biden administration,” said Mr. Bellamy, a former Charlottesville city councilman who was named to a statewide education post during Mr. McAuliffe’s first term. “And there has been a lot of people who really feel the administration hasn’t delivered on many of the things they wish they did.”To animate Democrats, Mr. McAuliffe has spent millions tying Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, portraying the former president as a grave and continuing threat to democracy and to Democratic values like abortion rights.But some party strategists say it is not enough for Democrats to campaign on what they can block; with control of Congress and the White House, they need to be able to run on what they have accomplished.“The lack of base intensity is based on Democrats not delivering, after people spent four years resisting Trump and getting Democratic majorities,” said Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat who lost his seat in Congress after supporting Mr. Obama’s health care law in 2010 and blamed congressional moderates for stalling passage of Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda.Yet some Democrats worry that any distinction between the president and the party’s dueling factions in Congress will be lost on voters.“In America we’ve loved to shoot the messenger, and the messenger is always the president,” said Mr. Morgan, the Democratic donor. “We can’t shoot Trump. He’s gone. So you can either blame Biden or God.” More

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      This Election Season, Look Out for Virginia

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      We’re heading around the bend, people! Elections are just a couple of weeks away and the two biggest races in the nation are …You have no idea, right?OK, most of the voting is going to be about local government — mayors and council members and holders of even smaller offices. But there are a couple of contests for governor, in Virginia and New Jersey.It’s Virginia that’s obsessing the world. Or at least the world that’s already terrified about what’s going to happen in 2022 (Dems lose Congress?) or 2024 (Trump? Trump? Trummmpp?).The candidates are the Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor who left office after one term because Virginia is the only state in the union that makes governors do that. Versus Glenn Youngkin, a former business tycoon who’s chipped in at least $16 million of his own money.McAuliffe isn’t exactly a pauper — Virginia’s very loose filing rules show he’s worth at least $6.9 million. But he’s always been a star at raising money. He once recalled a political event he was involved in when he was 7: “Nobody got in that door unless I got 50 dollars from them. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, 35 years later I’m still making sure that they pay.″OK, not all that inspiring, but everybody knows how important money is in these off-year elections. Virginia has evolved into a Democratic state, but what if McAuliffe loses — or just squeaks in? What if the turnout is puny? Will the nation read this as a prelude to disaster for congressional candidates next year?Democrats can’t think of anything else, and if you’ve wound up on any party mailing lists — truly, it can happen to anyone — you may have been getting more letters about Terry McAuliffe than you got greetings on your last birthday. Certainly bigger presents are involved.“I’m flabbergasted, Gail … ” reads one of the many, many missives I received from him recently. “We’ve been sending you email after email about just how important this race is, but it’s October, and it’s looking like a tossup right now.”Given my profession, I have never made a contribution to a political campaign in my life, but this doesn’t seem to have any impact on McAuliffe’s expectations.One of my all-time favorite donor requests came from Ellie Warner, McAuliffe’s finance director:“Gail, I’m freaking out right now! I meant to send this email earlier … but I forgot to press send, and now, we’re even more behind on our fund-raising goal than we were before.”That is so 2021. If, God forbid, McAuliffe somehow loses the election, “I forgot to press send” is going down in modern political history.New Jersey’s race has also had its moments. Republicans are trying to beat Gov. Phil Murphy over the head with his 2019 remark that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Now really, this is pretty obvious. Anybody who sits down with the family in, say, Montana, and announces, “Well, we’re going to relocate in the East, and the only thing we care about is taxes,” is not under any circumstances going to discuss real estate opportunities in the Trenton area.New Jersey is diverting but Murphy is expected to win handily. And the political world won’t be all that impressed. It’s Virginia that’s mobilized a national get-out-the-money campaign.“Gail, we don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick,” wrote the political consultant James Carville in a mass email about a “critical fund-raising deadline.”Carville, who recently referred to himself as “an email-signing slut,” has reportedly sent out over 40 pleas for donations to various campaigns in the last three months, one darkly demanding to know if the recipient wants “Democrats to lose every election from here to eternity.”Meanwhile, Donald Trump is, of course, online constantly (“Did you see my RALLY in IOWA? It was INCREDIBLE”). He is supporting Youngkin, but not with nearly the enthusiasm he’s dedicating to raising money for his own political action fund.“President Trump specifically told us he wants this one-of-a-kind HAND-SIGNED football to go to YOU, Friend,” says one missive, looking for a contribution for a chance to be in a drawing for said memento.In the Virginia race, Youngkin, whose nickname is reportedly “Yunk,” is delicately dancing around the Trump issue. It’s tricky — if you want to be a winning Republican, you have to keep his fans happy while assuring the suburban moderates that you know Joe Biden was actually elected president.McAuliffe’s job is to make voters turn out, and one main strategy is to terrify them into action. (“I thought folks would be fired up to get out the vote, but at this point, it seems like enthusiasm is at an all-time low.”)Same thing goes for money. (“You can imagine how confused I am about why people aren’t stepping up and donating. We’re blowing this one, Gail.”)Everybody’s jumping in. John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who’s planning to run for the U.S. Senate next year, wrote suggesting that I split an early bird $10 donation between his campaign and McAuliffe’s. There’s quite a lot of this going on, but Fetterman’s campaign website is notable for including the picture of a dog on the bottom, saying: “Hi, I’m Levi Fetterman. Boop my nose to donate $1.”Indeed, if you poked Levi’s nose, a special donation box did pop up. Like I said, they’re everywhere.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Virginia’s Governor Race Holds Clues for Control of Congress in 2022

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      The tight governor’s race in Virginia is a proving ground for strategies that could help determine control of Congress next year.Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, distilled the election into a single sentence.“It all adds up to the same thing here: Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump,” he said the other day.Contests for governor in Virginia have long been a barometer of the national political mood a year into a new presidency. For Democrats, the stakes have never seemed higher: A defeat for Mr. McAuliffe, a popular former governor seeking his old job back, could deal a devastating blow to the party’s confidence heading into next year’s midterms and to its strategy of running against Mr. Trump even when he is not on the ballot.For Republicans the stakes are less fraught: Their nominee, Glenn Youngkin, a first-time candidate, could lose narrowly given Virginia’s increasingly blue tinge but still represent a proof of concept that a G.O.P. candidate can unite the party’s moderates and hard-liners without going all in on Trumpism.Whether it is Mr. McAuliffe hammering away at Mr. Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election or Mr. Youngkin walking a Trump tightrope — nodding to the base on election fraud, while keeping the former president partly at arm’s length — Mr. Trump has been an unavoidable factor in the Virginia campaign.The unexpectedly close contest, which is effectively the opening act of the 2022 midterms, will also test the two parties’ appeal to the most crucial and coveted voters nationwide — those in populous and diverse suburbs, who are widely expected to decide the Virginia race as well as control of Congress next year.“I think every Democrat is following Virginia as a bellwether,” Gordon Hintz, the Democratic leader of Wisconsin’s State Assembly, said. “It definitely set the tone in 2017 for the 2018 cycle.”Beyond the broad-brush strategies, each candidate has landed on a favorite issue in the final two weeks before the Nov. 2 election, both of which are likely to feature prominently in races elsewhere. For Mr. McAuliffe, the issue is abortion rights, newly under threat in the Supreme Court. For Mr. Youngkin, the issue is parental control of schools, which could broaden his appeal to independents who abandoned the G.O.P. under Mr. Trump.Polls show a statistically tied race in Virginia, with worrying implications for President Biden, who easily won the state. Democrats say they are battling stiff but temporary headwinds: rising inflation, the lingering pandemic and an impression of Democratic incompetency in Washington, where the party has been in a stalemate over passing its big domestic priorities.“Youngkin, to his credit, has done a real good job of maintaining the loyalty of the Trump base while attempting to generate some suburban defections from the Democratic Party,’’ said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political analyst. “If a Republican can win in Virginia talking about critical race theory, about his pro-life beliefs — a state Biden carried by 10 points — it would be far more than a wake-up call for Democrats. It would be somebody playing reveille in their bedrooms with a trumpet.”Virginians, who vote for governor a year after presidential elections, have a long record of rebuking the party that holds the White House. Mr. McAuliffe’s win in 2013, a year after President Barack Obama was re-elected, was the sole exception in four decades. During the Trump years, the state swung even more toward Democrats in state and federal elections, driven by college-educated voters in the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Richmond who rejected the president’s divisive leadership.Terry McAuliffe is trying to link his opponent to Donald Trump as a way to motivate voters.Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s capture of 54 percent of suburban voters nationally last year was chiefly what put him in the White House. Suburbanites tipped battleground states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. They also hold the key to the majority of competitive House races in 2022. Whether Democrats have earned suburbanites’ long-term allegiance or Mr. Biden merely “rented” them, as strategists like to put it, is a major question that the Virginia election could help clarify.Republicans think they already know the answer. “The closeness of this race suggests the suburban swing voter is moving back to Republicans fast,’’ said Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC that focuses on House races. “That is a warning sign for the many incumbent Democrats in swing suburban districts.’’But Democrats believe that fear of Trumpism will keep the suburbs in their corner. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, chairman of the Democrats’ 2022 congressional campaign arm, said recently he was advising members in competitive suburban seats to run against “Trump toxicity without Trump on the ballot.”“You’ve got to remind them the other side is for insurrection, when we’re trying to do infrastructure,” Mr. Maloney said, speaking to the liberal podcast “Pod Save America.” “They’re for fighting, when we’re trying to fix problems.’’From the beginning, Mr. McAuliffe’s playbook has been to fuse Mr. Youngkin with Mr. Trump in voters’ minds. A new TV ad this week tries to link Mr. Youngkin to the former president’s equivocation about the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.Mr. McAuliffe was handed fresh ammunition last week when Mr. Trump phoned in an endorsement of Mr. Youngkin to a rally that began by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance using a flag that organizers said had been carried on Jan. 6 in Washington. Mr. McAuliffe pounced, and Mr. Youngkin, who had not attended the rally, issued a statement calling the use of the flag “weird and wrong.”Glenn Youngkin, center, is focusing on parental control of schools, which could broaden his appeal to independents.Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin has tried to straddle the party’s divisions, appealing to Mr. Trump’s devotees as well as to moderate Republicans and independents. The enthusiasm edge that some polls show Virginia Republicans hold over Democrats suggests he has had some success in uniting the party.That’s not an easy feat. “Youngkin seems more adept at trying to avoid Trump,’’ said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who is working for several Senate candidates in competitive 2022 races. “The degree to which that is successful will be a strong signal to lots of races around the country.”Mr. Youngkin began the general election emphasizing the conventional Republican issues of taxes and job creation, but he is now aggressively leaning into conservative attacks on the way race is taught in schools and on giving parents more control.A yearlong uproar in Loudoun County, targeting school board members over policies about racial equity and transgender students, suggests that Mr. Youngkin may be able to harness an issue that not only turns out conservatives, but persuades some suburban moderates.Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist from Virginia, said the schools issue was breaking through to suburban parents. “In my little focus group on the sidelines of soccer games on weekends — I’m fairly certain they didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 — at least some are extremely frustrated by what’s going on in the public schools,’’ said Mr. Seaton, who consults for candidates around the country. “It’s certainly possible that education, for the first time in a very long time, becomes something that Republican candidates run on.’’Pressing the issue, Mr. Youngkin has spent more than $1 million on a TV ad that plucks a statement of Mr. McAuliffe’s from a debate slightly out of context, in which he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”A Fox News poll of likely Virginia voters conducted last week showed a split decision on education. By a 23-point margin, parents among likely voters said they should have a say in what schools teach. However, when asked which candidate they backed, parents preferred Mr. McAuliffe 53 to 43 percent.For Mr. McAuliffe’s part, abortion is the issue he has leaned into in the race’s final stretch, spending heavily on a TV ad showing hidden-camera video of Mr. Youngkin acknowledging that he must publicly downplay his opposition to abortion to win independent voters, but promising to go “on offense” if elected.A second McAuliffe TV ad on abortion predicted that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and featured Mr. Youngkin saying he opposed adding a right to an abortion to Virginia’s constitution.Historically, a single-minded focus on abortion has driven mostly conservative voters. Now that abortion opponents appear on the brink of achieving what they have long sought, the power of the issue may shift toward Democrats. Its ability to motivate voters is receiving a trial run in Virginia. More

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      Glenn Youngkin Talks About Virginia. His Base Talks About Donald Trump.

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      Republicans in Virginia are saying what their nominee for governor will not: The governor’s race is a proxy for Mr. Trump’s grievances.GLEN ALLEN, Va. — The event was billed as a rally for Virginia conservatives ahead of next month’s election for governor. But it was mostly about Donald J. Trump.Each speaker, addressing the crowd of hundreds just outside the state capital of Richmond, declared the former president the rightful winner of the last presidential election and the assumed winner of the next one. The audience raved when Mr. Trump gave a short address over the phone.But it was the speaker after Mr. Trump who made the pivot from national to local. Amanda Chase, a state senator from Amelia County who has called herself “Trump in heels,” explicitly tied the former president to Glenn Youngkin, the state’s Republican nominee for governor. Supporting one required supporting the other, she said.“People know I’m not politically correct and I’ll say exactly what I’m thinking,” Ms. Chase said. “And if I’m telling you I’m supporting Glenn Youngkin, then you better be supporting Glenn Youngkin, because he’s the real deal.”Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate and a former governor, has sought to tie Mr. Youngkin to the former president, while the Republican candidate has largely tried to keep some distance from Mr. Trump, to avoid alienating the all-important suburban, moderate voters who could decide the race’s outcome. But at the grass-roots level, the messages from Virginia Democrats and Republicans are less distinct.Democrats argue that losing the statewide election on Nov. 2 would be a bad omen for them in the 2022 midterms, and Republicans agree. And while Democrats paint Mr. Youngkin as an acolyte of Mr. Trump who would help pave the way for the former president’s return in 2024, Republicans at the “Take Back Virginia” rally on Wednesday explicitly said the same thing. They were willing to make clear what Mr. Youngkin has carefully avoided.John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who organized the event and calls himself the “Godzilla of truth,” said the Virginia race was the first step in clawing back the political power that Trump voters believe was stolen from them last year. He was one of several speakers who encouraged the audience to become election workers.“Let’s win on Nov. 2 and send a message to America that we have had enough,” Mr. Fredericks told the crowd. “You are the motor. You are the engine. You are the deplorables that, if we turn out on Nov. 2 and vote early and be a poll watcher, you can change the course of history in America.”Lawn signs supporting Glenn Youngkin were available for people to take home, even though he did not attend the event.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesThe disconnect between the political messages of Mr. Youngkin and his base speaks to the careful line that Republicans have been forced to walk. Although the former president’s approval ratings with moderates and independents remain underwater, which helped President Biden win Virginia by 10 points last year, Mr. Trump is still the most potent driver of enthusiasm and energy among the party’s most loyal voters. In an off-year election where turnout is expected to be significantly decreased from presidential levels, courting that energy is paramount for Virginia Republicans.Mr. Youngkin did not attend the event in Glen Allen, but Ms. Chase spoke with the authority of a campaign surrogate, saying, “I work very closely with the Youngkin campaign.” Mr. Trump, in his telephone address, said, “I hope Glenn gets in there and straightens out Virginia.” At the cash bar, where patrons ordered wine and cocktails over discussions of election integrity, a collection of red signs supporting the Youngkin campaign were available to take home.But Mr. Youngkin came under fire after the Wednesday rally. At issue was a moment early in the event when a speaker had led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance using a flag that activists claimed was brought to the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6. Mr. McAuliffe attacked Mr. Youngkin over the use of that flag in the pledge, and Mr. Youngkin distanced himself from the event.“I wasn’t involved and so I don’t know,” Mr. Youngkin told reporters, referring to the episode. “But if that is the case, then we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag. And, oh, by the way, I’ve been so clear, there is no place for violence — none, none — in America today.”Trump supporters backing Mr. Youngkin have not been too troubled by such disavowals.Last month, Mr. Youngkin said he would have voted to certify the 2020 election results, after previously refusing to answer the question. Mr. Youngkin’s campaign said at the time that he “has repeatedly said that Joe Biden was legitimately elected and that there was no significant fraud in Virginia’s 2020 election.”Speakers at the rally connected Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, who is still the most potent driver of enthusiasm and energy in the Republican Party.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesThere has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and multiple state agencies and legislatures have repeatedly disproved Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election. However, at the event, attendees said in interviews that they believed Mr. Youngkin stood with them in their efforts to overturn the election and to oppose the Democratic agenda.James Thornton, 47, said he did not follow politics before Mr. Trump’s election and now attends school board meetings to protest the way he said race is taught in schools. And Roxanne Joseph-Barber, 55, was passing out petitions for a forensic audit of Virginia’s 2020 presidential election results.Asked what was the most important thing she wanted campaigns to know about voters like her, Ms. Joseph-Barber paused to collect herself.“The election wasn’t honest, and we know that,” she said. “So why wouldn’t we be mad? Of course we’re mad.”Ms. Chase, who ran for governor against Mr. Youngkin before becoming a vocal supporter of his campaign, made clear in her speech that she did not trust the 2020 election results — and also implied that Mr. Youngkin agreed with her.She boasted about traveling to Arizona, South Dakota and Texas to meet with other state legislators who were interested in finding evidence that the election was stolen. And she said that even though Mr. Youngkin dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud during his debates with Mr. McAuliffe, voters should still trust that he is on their side.“I know what’s going on, and the Youngkin campaign knows what’s going on,” Ms. Chase told the crowd. In the debates, she added, Mr. Youngkin could not give “the Democrats ammo to use against us, to get the independents to go with Terry McAuliffe.”Peter Peterson, a veteran in his 60s, said that while he planned to vote for Mr. Youngkin in opposition to the Democratic agenda, he had noticed Mr. Youngkin’s hesitancy on what Mr. Peterson called his most important issue: election fraud.“Everyone treats the voting stuff as if it’s a third rail,” Mr. Peterson said. “No one wants to come out and say the vote was stolen.”Mr. Peterson, who traveled about 100 miles from Virginia Beach for the rally, said he preferred a blunt-force political instrument such as Mr. Trump to candidates who deliver polished speeches. At the Glen Allen rally, polish was in short supply.Speakers seemed to one-up each other in expressing their loyalty to Mr. Trump: Some called for the arrest of Mr. Biden. Others compared vaccine mandates to conditions in Nazi Germany or invoked violent periods in American history, including the Civil War and the American Revolution, to describe the stakes of upcoming elections.Jan Morgan, a right-wing commentator and long-shot Senate candidate in Arkansas who spoke at the event, said conservatives should see themselves much like latter-day revolutionary soldiers.“As far as I can tell,” she said, “you still got your shoes. You’ve got your clothes, and I know you’ve got guns.”The crowd cheered in response. More

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      Virginia Governor's Race: McAuliffe Faces Democratic Apathy

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      Though the state is getting bluer, voters’ exhaustion is imperiling the former governor’s comeback attempt against his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.RICHMOND, Va. — Terry McAuliffe doesn’t do subtext well.So when Mr. McAuliffe appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this week, it wasn’t long before the Democrat let slip the biggest challenge he’s facing next month in his bid to reclaim Virginia’s governorship. “People got to understand, Joe, this is about turnout,” he told the show’s co-host, Joe Scarborough.Mr. McAuliffe could be forgiven for effectively reading his stage directions out loud. While he is running against a self-funding, and hazily defined, Republican, polls and interviews show that Mr. McAuliffe is confronting an equally daunting obstacle: Democratic apathy.With former President Donald Trump out of office, congressional Democrats in a bitter standoff and Virginia Democrats having claimed every political prize, Mr. McAuliffe is straining to motivate the liberal voters in his increasingly blue state.At the moment — one that is being watched closely by both parties for clues about the elections next year — he is bumping up against a fatigued electorate.Virginia has elections every year, because its state campaigns are in odd-numbered years while its federal elections are, as everywhere, in even years. But voters here are drained from the Trump administration’s round-the-clock drama, which they felt more acutely because of their proximity to Washington, where the local news is also national news.Then there is the 19-month fog of Covid-19, which has not only disrupted jobs, schools and daily life but also diverted attention from state politics — which had already been dimmed by the decline of local news outlets and eclipsed by national political news.“A lot of folks are dealing with so many other things, I’m not sure that the broader community knows this is taking place, or that it’s rising to the level of importance,” said Sean Miller, who runs the Boys & Girls Club in a largely Black part of Richmond and who gave Mr. McAuliffe a tour of his center this week.Mr. McAuliffe’s former education secretary, Anne Holton — the daughter of one former governor and the wife of another — was more succinct.“People are a little exhausted,” Ms. Holton said after a round-table discussion about education in Alexandria. Still, she predicted “very high turnout.”Mr. McAuliffe, in his well-caffeinated way, is doing all he can to sound the alarm.He is stepping up his appearances on national cable news programs and summoning the biggest names in his party to cross the Potomac. Former President Barack Obama is coming to Virginia later this month, President Biden is expected soon after, and a parade of other surrogates, including Vice President Kamala Harris, are also on the way.The once and potentially future governor, who by state law could not run for re-election after his term ended in 2018, is also trying to rouse complacent Democrats by amping up his rhetoric against his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.Just as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California did before his larger-than-expected recall victory last month, Mr. McAuliffe is calling Democrats to the barricades by warning that Mr. Youngkin would build a liberal house of horrors in Virginia: Texas’ abortion laws, Florida’s Covid policies and, most ominous of all, Mr. Trump’s rebirth.“We cannot let Trump off the mat — his comeback is not starting in Virginia,” Mr. McAuliffe told reporters outside Fairfax County’s main early-voting site on Wednesday. Then he paused for just a moment before adding, “Only if Democrats get out and vote.”Democratic leadership in the state has loosened voting access so any resident can vote in person or by mail from Sept. 17 to Oct. 30.Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesA pro-business Democrat with an unparalleled donor network, Mr. McAuliffe was seen by state Democrats as their safest choice. But with his decades of political experience as a fund-raiser and party leader, he’s not exactly a fresh face who will rally a new generation of voters to the polls.In recent weeks, he has made no effort to hide his frustration that his party’s warring factions in Congress have held up a bipartisan infrastructure bill. And his aides fear that without some good news from Washington, the race could slip away.While Mr. Biden carried the state by 10 points last year, public and private polling indicates the president’s approval rating has fallen to or below 50 percent in Virginia. Those same surveys suggest that Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Youngkin are locked in a close race but that more of Mr. Youngkin’s voters are enthusiastic about voting compared with Mr. McAuliffe’s voters.Tellingly, though, the greater the turnout projections, the wider Mr. McAuliffe’s lead grows in the polls.That’s because of Virginia’s significant transformation from a Republican redoubt and hotbed of social rest to a multiracial archipelago of cities and suburbs that are as progressive as the rest of the country’s metropolitan areas. However, if voters in these population hubs, which are filled with immigrants and transplants, do not show up to the polls, Virginia may return a Republican to the governor’s mansion for the first time since 2009.That was also the last time Virginians went to the polls in the first year under a new Democratic president, Mr. Obama, whose approval ratings, like Mr. Biden’s today, had sagged since he was sworn in. Turnout in Virginia collapsed to the lowest level for a governor’s race in four decades.Unlike today, though, the previous unpopular Republican president, George W. Bush, had moved happily into retirement and ceded the spotlight fully to his successor.The question now is if the accelerating demographic shift in Virginia — no Republican has won a statewide race since 2009 — and Mr. Trump’s continued presence on the political scene are enough to lift Democrats even in a less than favorable environment.There are signs that those two factors could prove sufficient for Mr. McAuliffe, so long as he can galvanize Democrats in the same fashion as Mr. Newsom did.While Virginia Democrats may in some ways be victims of their own success, having claimed every major office and taken control of the legislature, their dominance has also allowed them to loosen voting laws. While other Southern states have been tightening voting access, Virginia enacted expansive early voting this year. Residents can vote in person or by mail between Sept. 17 and Oct. 30.What’s more, Northern Virginia has become increasingly hostile to Republicans. Fairfax County, the state’s most populous, split about evenly between Mr. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Last year, Mr. Trump won just 28 percent of the vote there.Mr. Youngkin, who, like Mr. McAuliffe, lives in Fairfax, is positioned to perform far better there. But the threat of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has clearly alarmed voters in the affluent and well-educated county.In interviews outside Fairfax’s early-voting site, every McAuliffe voter cited Mr. Trump as a reason for supporting the Democrat. Transportation, education and taxes — longtime core issues of Virginia governor’s races — were scarcely mentioned.Paul Erickson, an architect from Vienna, Va., summoned a reporter back after revealing his concerns about Mr. Trump and said in an urgent tone that he had more to share.“What I didn’t say is, for the first time in my adult life I fear for our nation,” Mr. Erickson said. “We’re tearing ourselves apart from within.”Others were less expansive but equally to the point.“I don’t like Trump, and I believe Youngkin is equal to Trump,” said Carol Myers, a retiree who, with her husband, was voting before playing a round of golf at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington.Democrats are portraying Glenn Youngkin as a Trump clone.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin’s aides are skeptical that their candidate, whom they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars painting as an inoffensive suburban dad, can be MAGA-fied.On Thursday, though, the Republican received a reminder that Mr. Trump and his supporters are determined to make him take sides between them and Virginia’s broader, anti-Trump electorate.Mr. Youngkin had so far avoided inviting Mr. Trump to the state — and avoided a Trumpian attack for the stiff arm. But the former president called into a Virginia political rally on Wednesday night and said, “I hope Glenn gets in there.” More problematic for Mr. Youngkin, event organizers pledged allegiance to a flag that had been present at the Jan. 6 rally after which supporters of Mr. Trump attacked the Capitol.By the end of the day Thursday, Mr. Youngkin — who had skipped the rally to deny Democrats an opening to link him to Mr. Trump — issued a statement calling the use of the flag “weird and wrong.”To Mr. McAuliffe it was something else: a political gift.Mr. McAuliffe has tried to lash Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, noting that he had gladly accepted the former president’s endorsement, and derides him as “a Trump wannabe,.”If that Trumpification strategy works for Mr. McAuliffe, it will most likely be replicated by other Democrats running in blue and purple states next year.In Virginia, it’s easy to understand why Democrats have gone back to the same well: Mr. Trump was a one-man turnout machine for them. In 2019, when only state House and Senate races were on the ballot, turnout reached almost the same level as in 2013, when Mr. McAuliffe won the governorship. During the 2018 congressional midterms, when Virginia Democrats picked up two House seats, turnout was at nearly 60 percent. Four years earlier, in a pre-Trump midterm, turnout here was less than 42 percent.In Richmond’s Black community, Mr. Trump is still on the minds of some voters.“It’s crazy to think that a president that lost still has such a hold on a certain group of people,” said Herman Baskerville, who owns Big Herm’s restaurant in the city’s historic Jackson Ward.Standing outside his restaurant as dusk fell on quiet streets, however, Mr. Baskerville was more focused on the slowdown in foot traffic around Richmond during the coronavirus pandemic. Fewer people working in their offices has meant fewer customers.“Many of us feel like we’re near normal, but there are a lot of folks who are still suffering,” said Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond. Then Mr. Stoney, a protégé of Mr. McAuliffe’s, got back on message.“My fear is, the policies you see in Florida and Texas, that could take Virginia backwards,” he said. More

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      In Virginia Governor's Race, National Issues Dominate Ad Wars

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      In a governor’s race deemed a bellwether for the 2022 midterms, the battle between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin has ignited over national cultural issues.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Four of the five most expensive ads for the McAuliffe campaign have been negative, with a particular focus on abortion.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesIt’s a long-held mantra in elections: All politics are local. But the ad wars in the race for Virginia governor indicate that national is the new normal.In a contest deemed a bellwether for the 2022 midterms, the battle between Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and the state’s former governor, and Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has ignited more over the cultural issues currently inflaming national politics than traditional tension points like state and local taxes.Atop the list of the most aired ads in the race are attacks about abortion (though there’s no current law or challenge to abortion rights in Virginia) and schools (amid the national debates on curriculum, critical race theory and mask mandates).In an expensive race with in-person campaigning still limited by the pandemic, the national issues being debated over the airwaves have set the tone. The two candidates have combined to spend more than $36 million on broadcast television ads at just over $18 million each, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. Outside groups and super PACs have largely stayed on the sidelines.More than 60 percent of the spending has been on ads that have at least some negative comparisons or attacks, according to AdImpact.Four of the five most expensive ads for the McAuliffe campaign have been negative, with a particular focus on abortion, an issue that rocketed to the forefront of national politics after Texas passed a new law that bans almost all abortions.The campaign has put the most money behind a 60-second ad that seizes on a hidden-camera video recorded by a liberal activist that showed Youngkin openly worrying about losing “independent votes” over the issue, but promising to go “on offense” to restrict access to abortion if Republicans also take the statehouse. The McAuliffe campaign portrayed Youngkin as beholden to the conservative fringe of the Republican Party.“Glenn Youngkin has been caught,” a female narrative voice whispers as news reports of the video fill the screen. “Caught on video admitting his far-right agenda.”In another ad, the McAuliffe campaign highlights a doctor who claims that Youngkin’s support of abortion limits would “harm my patients” and that he is inserting politics into science and medicine, an echo of the common critiques of the anti-vaccine and anti-mask movements.Other national dividing lines, such as voting rights, police reform and public health, play central roles in the McAuliffe campaign’s effort to paint Youngkin with the patina of a Trump Republican; more than 75 percent of McAuliffe’s ads include an attack on or contrast drawn with his opponent.For the Youngkin campaign, one ad is dominating the rotation: a clip from a debate in September where McAuliffe stated, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The comment followed an argument between the two candidates over a veto McAuliffe signed as governor in 2017 of legislation that had allowed parents to opt out of allowing their children to study material deemed sexually explicit.Schools have quickly climbed to the forefront of national political scraps, with right-wing media seizing on a crusade against school mask mandates and critical race theory, and major conservative pundits pushing for Republicans to focus on school board races. Though McAuliffe’s quote did not originate in the current tussle over schools, it quickly resonated. The Youngkin campaign put more than $1 million behind the ad.Youngkin has a more balanced mix of positive and negative advertising, including a lot of biographical ads, highlighting his past as a college basketball player and businessman, and presenting him as an outsider to Virginia politics who can get things done.But the disparity in the ratio of positive to negative ads doesn’t necessarily reflect one candidate on the upswing or another on the defensive. Youngkin, who spent most of his career in business, has to keep introducing himself to voters while simultaneously trying to define McAuliffe through negative ads.McAuliffe, a former governor who left office in 2018 polling safely above water, is a known quantity in the state, which prohibits governors from serving two consecutive terms. With little need for biographical ads, McAuliffe’s campaign has gone more aggressively on the offensive, including with some more out-of-the-box national attack ads about the rights to Taylor Swift’s music.In a small digital ad effort, the McAuliffe campaign bought ads on Instagram, Facebook and Google that highlighted Swift’s claim that the Carlyle Group, which Youngkin used to lead as a co-chief executive, helped finance a sale of the rights to her music.One ad closes with a nod to Swift’s lyrics: “’Cause Glenn, now we got bad blood.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      How Schools Are Shaping the Virginia Governor's Race

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      Virginia Republicans in a tight governor’s race have been staging “Parents Matter” rallies and tapping into conservative anger over mandates and critical race theory.WINCHESTER, Va. — As a lifelong Republican in her home state of Virginia, Tammy Yoder faithfully casts her ballot for those who want to lower taxes, oppose abortion and back other conservative causes.But the issue that transformed Ms. Yoder, a stay-at-home mother, from a reliable voter to the kind of person who brings three young children to an evening campaign rally wasn’t her Christian values or her pocketbook.It was something even more personal, she said: What her children learn in school. “The past year has revealed a ton to me,” said Ms. Yoder, 41, as she waited in this Northern Virginia exurb for a speech by Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor. “The more I’ve listened and paid attention, the more that I see what’s happening in schools and on college campuses. And the stuff I see, I don’t want corrupting my children.”From fights over evolution to desegregation to prayer, education battles have been a staple of the country’s divisive cultural issues for decades. But not quite like this. After months of closed classrooms and lost learning time, Republicans in Virginia are making the schools the focus of their final push to capture the governor’s office, hoping to rally conservatives around both their frustrations over mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations and their fears of what their children are being taught.Vocal groups of parents, some led by Republican activists, are organizing against school curriculums, opposing public-health measures and calling for recalls of school board members. And Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive, has capitalized, seizing on conservatives’ concerns about instruction on race and the rights of transgender children to argue that Democrats want to come between parents and their children’s education.Mr. Youngkin’s attacks have forced Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic former governor trying to win back his old job, onto the defensive, and have thrust the ordinarily local issues surrounding schools into the middle of a rancorous nationwide shouting match.The Virginia race offers an early electoral test of that conservative energy. A victory by Mr. Youngkin would mark the first statewide win for Republicans in a dozen years and likely trigger a political panic within the Democratic Party about its prospects in next year’s midterm elections. Some Republican officials and strategists liken the surge of activism to the Tea Party, the anti-government movement that helped them win control of the House in 2010 and unleashed a revival of outrage politics that would define their party for the next decade.At a campaign rally in Winchester, Mr. Youngkin made little mention of Mr. Trump, vaccines or the coronavirus.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“There’s just so much focus on the schools, and it’s visceral,” said John Whitbeck, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia from Loudoun County, where acrimonious school board meetings have led to arrests, death threats and constant airtime on conservative media. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m against the debt ceiling.’ This is like, ‘You’re destroying our children’s education.’ And, look, angry people vote.”Polling in recent weeks has shown a tight race, with Democrats less enthusiastic than Republicans about voting. Mr. McAuliffe, who was barred from seeking re-election in 2017 by Virginia law, is faring worse in the fast-growing, voter-rich Northern Virginia suburbs than Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, did when he won four years ago, according to some surveys.Mr. Youngkin’s focus on schools may not resonate as strongly with the broader electorate.Measures such as mask and vaccine mandates are cutting differently in the governor’s race in more liberal New Jersey and are overwhelmingly popular among Virginia’s independents and Democrats. Critical race theory — an advanced academic concept generally not introduced until college — is not part of classroom teaching in Virginia and many voters say they do not know enough about it to have an opinion. And turning schools into a cultural war zone by railing against equity initiatives, books with sexual content and public health measures avoids tackling issues like budget cuts and the other thornier problems facing American education.But in an off-year election, when both sides anticipate a sharp falloff in voting, victory may hinge on which candidate can best motivate their base. Mr. Youngkin and his strategists believe that in the fights roiling schools they have discovered the rare issue that can galvanize their voters, even in places that are shifting the state to the left.Frustration with education is an issue that unites Republicans, energizing moderates eager to ensure their children remain in school as well as conservatives who see a liberal plot to indoctrinate their children with the belief that white people are inherently racist.Mr. Youngkin and his strategists believe that in the fights roiling schools they have discovered an issue that can galvanize their voters.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“The former governor is saying, ‘Hey I’ll decide how to teach your kids, not you’ — that’s really the issue driving this,” said John Fredericks, who led Donald Trump’s Virginia campaign last year. “Glenn Youngkin is the candidate that’s been able to straddle both sides of the party. And so far he’s given us just enough where we can enthusiastically vote for the guy.”Republicans have centered much of their closing argument around a statement by Mr. McAuliffe in last month’s debate. The comment came after Mr. Youngkin attacked Mr. McAuliffe over his 2017 veto of a bill permitting parents to opt out of allowing their children to study material deemed sexually explicit. The dispute was prompted by a mother who objected to her son, a high school senior, reading literary classics including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.”Mr. McAuliffe shot back that he did not believe “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” In the weeks since, he’s stood by those remarks, saying that the state Board of Education and local school boards should determine what is taught in the classroom.But Mr. Youngkin and Republicans, stripping the quotation from its context, have turned the footage into the core of their argument that Mr. McAuliffe would side with government over parents. Video of the remark was featured in a flurry of digital ads and a statewide television commercial accusing Mr. McAuliffe of going “on the attack against parents.” Mr. Youngkin’s team began scheduling “Parents Matter” rallies in exurban counties, as they actively courted parent activist groups.And Mr. Youngkin has also voiced support for Byron Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher in Loudoun County. Mr. Cross was suspended after announcing at a school board meeting that he would not address transgender students by their preferred pronouns because of his Christian faith.At a campaign rally last week in Winchester, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley in one of the fast-growing exurb counties around Washington, Mr. Youngkin made little mention of Mr. Trump, vaccines or the coronavirus. Instead, he repeatedly invoked issues around schools as top priorities. He drew some of the loudest applause from the overwhelmingly white audience when he promised to ban critical race theory on his first day in office and vowed that schools would never be closed again.A victory by Mr. Youngkin would mark the first statewide win for Republicans in a dozen years.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This is what big government means for Terry McAuliffe. He not only wants to stand between you and your children. He wants to make government a tool to silence us,” Mr. Youngkin told the crowd of nearly 200 people at a farm stand. “This is no longer a campaign. This is a movement. It’s a movement led by parents.”Mr. McAuliffe has dismissed the outrage surrounding critical race theory as “racist” and “a dog whistle.” He supports mask and vaccine mandates for students, teachers and school staff. (Mr. Youngkin says he encourages Virginians to get vaccinated against the coronavirus but does not support mandates.)But there are signs that Democrats sense danger. Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign has returned to highlighting his education proposals to undercut any argument that Mr. Youngkin could be stronger on the issue, promising to invest $2 billion in education, raise teacher pay, expand pre-K programs and invest in broadband access for students. On Friday, Mr. McAuliffe released an ad saying that Mr. Youngkin would cut billions of dollars in education funding and bring “Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos’s education policies to Virginia.”The parent organizations in Virginia say they are nonpartisan and more focused on school board elections than national politics. But many are led by Republican activists, raise funds from Republican Party donors and are helped by conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, which has held briefings to discuss model legislation to block critical race theory. Last month, the Republican National Committee ran ads attacking “fascist mask mandates” and highlighting video clips of angry parents yelling at school board members.Erin Holl, a Republican voter from Frederick County in the northern corner of the state, used to think of herself as conservative but not necessarily political. That was before the coronavirus. Months of online learning with her young daughters and the closure of her dog sitting business changed how much attention she paid the governor’s race.“I gave birth to her,” said Ms. Holl, gesturing to her daughter. “I have a right to say how she is raised. I have a right to say how she is vaccinated. This has changed how I felt about politics.” More